List of humorous units of measurement
:This is a sub-article to List of unusual units of measurement Many comedians and writers have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and of units that are widely known in the world for their humor value. Conventional These units may or may not have precise objectively measurable values, but all of them measure quantities that have been defined within the S.I. system of units. Systems Great Underground Empire (Zork) In the series of games, the Great Underground Empire had its own system of measures, the most frequently referenced of which was the bloit. Defined as the distance the king's favorite pet could run in one hour (spoofing a popular legend about the history of the foot), the length of the bloit varied dramatically, but the one canonical conversion to real-world units puts it at approximately two-thirds of a mile (1 km). Liquid volume was measured in gloops, and temperature in degrees Q (57 °Q is said to be the of water).''Encyclopedia Frobozzica, Infocom, 1993. Potrzebie In issue 33, published a partial table of the " System of Weights and Measures", developed by 19-year-old , later a famed . According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm. Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of , which is "a form of pie with a of and a specific heat of .31416"), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 " "). The system also features such units as , cowznofski, vreeble, [[wiktionary:hoo-ha|''hoo'', and hah]]. According to the "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke " " for a month and a 100-clarke "cowznofski," for a year, the date of October 29, 2007, is rendered as "To 1, 190 C. M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of our MAD"). The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.) Length Beard-second The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in . The beard-second is defined as the length an average grows in one second. Kemp Bennet Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100 angstroms, (i.e. 10 nanometers), as does Nordling and Österman's Physics Handbook. However, supports the beard-second for unit conversions using the value 5 nm http://www.google.com/search?q=6+meters+in+beard-seconds, i.e. half the value according to Kolb and Physics Handbook. Sheppey A measure of distance equal to about of a mile (1.4 km), defined as the closest distance at which remain picturesque. The Sheppey is the creation of and , included in , their dictionary of putative meanings for words that are actually just place names. The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd , 1984. ISBN 0-517-55347-3 It is named after the in the UK. Smoot The smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height of — who, fittingly, was later the president of the . The unit is used to measure the length of the . Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot was a pledge at (class of 1962), the bridge was measured to be 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Mr. Smoot himself as a . | location = | accessdate = 2010-07-20 | quote = Specifically noting the bridge's length of 364.4 Smoots (+/- 1 ear), the plaque, a gift of the MIT Class of 1962, honors the prank's 50th anniversary. }} At the time, Smoot was 5 feet, 7 inches, or 170 cm, tall. and include the smoot as a unit of measurement. Supposedly, the Cambridge (Massachusetts) police department got into the convention of using Smoots to measure the locations of accidents and incidents on the bridge. When the original markings were removed or covered over during bridge maintenance, the police had to request that someone reapply the Smoot scale markings. Area Barn, shed, outhouse A barn is a serious unit of area used by nuclear physicists to quantify the scattering or absorption cross-section of very small particles, such as atomic nuclei. (BIPM) | accessdate = 2009-03-13 }} It is one of the very few units which are accepted to be used with SI units, and one of the most recent units to have been established (cf. the knot and the bar, other non-SI units acceptable in limited circumstances). One barn is equal to 1.0 m2. The name derives from the folk expression "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn", used by physicists to refer to the difficulty of achieving a collision between particles. The outhouse (1.0 barns) and shed (1.0 barns) are derived by analogy. Spatial volume Barn-megaparsec This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (b) is multiplied by a megaparsec (Mpc) - a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between - the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to of a teaspoon (about 3 ml). Hubble-barn Similar to the Barn-megaparsec, the Hubble-barn uses the Barn mentioned above with the , which is the length of the visible Universe as derived by using the Hubble Constant and the Speed of Light. This amounts to around 3.45 Gallons (13.1 L). Bottlesworth This unit is approximately equal to a of (0.75 litres), and is designed to allow the use of wine in scientific experiments in the science comedy . Power Donkeypower This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts—about a third of a horsepower. Time Tatum grid The Tatum grid is the "lowest regular that a listener intuitively infers from the timing of perceived musical events." It is named after the legendary jazz pianist .Tristan Jehan, Creating Music By Listening. PhD Thesis, MIT 2005, section 3.4.3 Friedman The Friedman is approximately six months, specifically six months in the future, and named after columnist who repeatedly used the span in reference to when a determination of Iraq's future could be surmised. | title = Gen. Petreaus is in | date = February 28, 2007 }} }} Non-conventional These units describe dimensions which are not and can not be covered by the S.I system of units. Earthquake intensity Tom Weller suggests the humorous Rictus scale (a takeoff of the conventional Richter scale) for earthquake intensity, as pertains to later media coverage of the event. | publisher = Houghton Mifflin | year = 1985 | location = | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0-395-36646-1 | page = 76 }} Information flow: Dirac Physicist was known among his colleagues for his precise yet taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of a dirac which was one word per hour. | page = 89 }} Beauty: Helen (from the ) is widely known as "the face that launched a thousand ships". Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. According to , a 1981 novel by , this system was invented by Cambridge mathematician . However, the term was possibly first suggested by . The obvious reference is 's lines from the 1592 play , "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" The word Helen is also used in the book Pretties, the second book in the series Uglies by . In that book, the characters joke about how pretty something looks in helens and megahelens. The Catalogue of Ships from Book II of , which describes in detail the commanders who came to fight for Helen and the ships they brought with them, details a total of 1,186 ships which came to fight the Trojan War. As such, Helen herself has a beauty rating of 1.186 helens, capable of launching more than one thousand ships. Negative values have also been observed—these, of course, are measured by the number of ships sunk or the number of clocks stopped. An alternative interpretation of 1 negative helen is the amount of negative beauty (i.e. ugliness) that can launch one thousand ships the other way. has written a humorous article describing various Helen-units. It has a chart with the fire-lighting and ship-launching capability for different powers of "Helens". For example a picohelen (ph) (10−12 helens) indicates the amount of beauty that can "Barbecue a couple of Steaks & Toss an Inner Tube Into the Pool". , in , defines beauty both in terms of ships launched, and also in terms of the number of women that one woman will, on average, be more beautiful than. One helen (H) is the quantity of beauty to be more beautiful than 50 million women, the number of women estimated to have been alive in the 12th century BC. Ten helena (Ha) is the beauty sufficient for one oarsman (of which 50 are on a ship) to risk his life, or be the most beautiful of a thousand women. Beauty is logarithmic on a base of 2. For beauty to increase by 1 Ha, a woman must be the most beautiful of twice as many women. One helen is 25.6 Ha. The most beautiful woman who ever lived would score 34.2 Ha, and 1.34 H, the pick of a dozen women would be 3.6 Ha, and 0.14 H. Bogosity: Lenat The unit of bogosity, derived from the fictional field of Quantum Bogodynamics. The Lenat is seldom used, as it is understood that it is too large for normal conversation. Its most common form is the microlenat. Coolness: MegaFonzie A is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by in the episode, . A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness inherent in the character .http://www.thegameslave.com/Misc/Science/TreatiseonUnitsofMeasure.htm Magical energy: Thaum The Thaum is a measuring unit used in the series of Discworld novels to quantify . It equals the amount of mystical energy required to conjure up one small white pigeon, or three normal-sized billiard balls. It can, of course, be measured with a thaumometer, and regular SI Prefixes apply (e.g. millithaum, kilothaum). A thaumometer looks like a greenish glass cube with a dial on one side. A standard one is good for up to a million thaums — if there is more magic than that around, measuring it should not be your primary concern. It is not to be confused with the magical particle "thaum" from the same series of novels. Obstruction: Pouter During WW2, scientists working for encountered a particularly obstructive British Naval Officer called Commander Pouter, for whom the unit of Obstruction was named, due to his implacable opposition to any work being carried out in the field for which he was personally responsible. Subsequently, the micropouter was used, as it was hoped that no individual of a similarly difficult disposition would be encountered, and the pouter was too large a unit for everyday use. Pleasure and pain: Hedon and Dolor Philosophers talking about 's sometimes use the conceptual unit of the hedon to describe the amount of pleasure, equivalent to the amount of pleasure a person receives from gaining one of .EG, "Utilitarianism and the Wrongness of Killing", Richard G. Henson, The Philosophical Review Vol. 80, No. 3 (Jul., 1971), pp. 320-337. The converse unit of pain or displeasure is the dolor. }} Fame: Warhol This is a unit of fame or , derived from 's dictum "everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes". It represents, naturally, . Some multiples are: *1 kilowarhol — famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days. A sort of metric "nine-day wonder". *1 megawarhol — famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years. First used by in 1997. Also used simply as meaning 15 minutes; as the , that could infect all vulnerable machines on the entire Internet in 15 minutes or less. Quackery: Canard The is a unit of created by Andy Lewis in the need for a fractional index. It is proposed as an SI Unit to replace the old Crackpot Index that was presented in 1998. :"Quack words include 'energy', 'holistic', 'vibrations', 'magnetic healing', 'quantum'. These words are usually borrowed from physics and used to promote dubious health claims." It scores on a scale from 0 to 10 the quantity of quackery used. A Quackometer (measurer of fruitloopery) can be found at http://www.quackometer.net/?page=quackometer. This website measures webpages and also association of names with quackery. Twitter followers: Wheaton The Wheaton is a measurement of Twitter followers relative to celebrity . The measurement was standardized when Wil Wheaton achieved half a million Twitter followers, with the effect that Wil Wheaton now has 3.91 Wheatons himself. As few Twitter users have millions of followers, the milliwheaton (500 followers) is more commonly used. See also * Units of measurement * Systems of measurement * History of measurement * List of unusual units of measurement References Category:Units of measure